When Satya Nadella first took the reins as Microsoft CEO in February 2014, the company was losing steam fast. Microsoft Windows 8 had been a disaster. Microsoft employees were constantly battling behind the scenes for supremacy. And all the while, consumers and developers alike were losing the faith. Times change. Now, in 2016, Microsoft has found its groove again as a company that provides software and services to everyone, on any device - and once-skeptical investors now believe the turnaround is real. There's still a lot that Microsoft needs to do. But take a look back at the life and career of Satya Nadella, the CEO who's making it all happen.On February 4 Satya Nadella completed two years as the CEO of Microsoft. It’s been an eventful time for the tech company. Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, and launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android. But Nadella’s real victory — the monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is has set a specific tone for the company. "There is something only a CEO uniquely can do, which is set that tone, which can then capture the soul of the collective," Nadella said in an interview late last year.

One Microsoft

The Microsoft of old was a cutthroat kind of place. There were several warring, independent product groups, all doing their own things. A great example is the Microsoft Xbox video game console, which started off as a project to improve Windows and get a PC in the living room, but which turned into an autonomous part of the company that Wall Street couldn’t make heads or tails of. That t rick led over into the company’s popular perception, as a company focused on strong arm sales tactics, not innovation.

Taking off the blinders

Microsoft’s mandate, under Nadella, is to help people "achieve more", if you buy the corporate-speak. In plainer terms, Nadella likes to make sure that Microsoft is focusing on making things that people actually enjoy using, no matter what kind of device they’re using it on. "Revenue is a lagging indicator, usage is a leading indicator," Nadella likes to say, according to Microsoft CVP Brad Anderson. And the company’s executives and developers love it. Without having to worry about worshipping at the altar of Windows, it can do all kinds of stuff it could never even consider before.

Stress on essence

"A muscle we’re developing at Microsoft is determining the soul or essence of these products, and developing accordingly," says Corporate VP of Outlook Javier Soltero, who came to Microsoft in the acquisition of startup Acompli. A great example: The Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform now supports Linux, the free operating system that developers love, but Ballmer once referred to as "a cancer" and "communism". Under Nadella, MS Office has expanded from a set of document-editing tools into a whole range of products and services that people enjoy using.

Window to the future

A big piece of Microsoft’s strategy hinges on the so-called Windows Universal App platform, where a developer can write an app once, sell it in the Windows Store, and have it work on any Windows 10 device — from PCs to tablets and back. But it also gives Microsoft, internally, one platform on which to work, and makes sure that everybody in the company is rowing the same direction. Case in point: In November 2015, the Xbox One video game console got an update that installed a version of Windows 10 at the core. In the not-so-distant future, it’s going to get a version of the Windows Store app market focused on gaming.

A unified strategy

"Everything will be unified at some point," says Xbox Group Product Manager Peter Orullian. While Microsoft isn’t going to stop building iPhone and Android apps any time soon, it means that Microsoft’s internal product teams aren’t going to compete with each other — because there’s no competition. Windows is Windows, no matter what device it’s running on.

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